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Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Methods to Explore the Influence of Top-down Visual Processes on Motor Behavior
Published on: April 16, 2014
Laminar dissociation of feedforward and feedback in high-level ventral visual cortex during imagery and perception
Tony Carricarte1,2,3, Polina Iamshchinina4, Robert Trampel5
1Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
Visual imagery and perception share neural machinery but rely on different information flow. While perception is driven by the integration of sensory feedforward and internally generated feedback information, imagery relies on feedback only. This suggests that although imagery and perception may activate overlapping brain regions, they do so in informationally distinctive ways. Using lamina-resolved MRI at 7 T, we measured the neural activity during imagery and perception of faces and scenes in high-level ventral visual cortex at the mesoscale of laminar organization that distinguishes feedforward from feedback signals. We found distinctive laminar profiles for imagery and perception of scenes and faces in the parahippocampal place area and the fusiform face area, respectively. Our findings provide insight into the neural basis of the phenomenology of visual imagery versus perception and shed new light into the mesoscale organization of feedforward and feedback information flow in high-level ventral visual cortex.
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